Instagram isn't just a place to post selfies - people are using the app to share their struggle with mental and physical issues.

A new study has found that pictures help individuals explain feelings and experiences that are often too painful or complicated to put into words.

Researchers have also discovered that it is not just the 'likes' that help individuals break their silence, but it is also comments offering instrumental support that have made Instagram a 'haven'.

Instagram isn't just a place to post selfies - people are using the app to share their struggles with mental issues. A new study has found that pictures help individuals explain feelings and experiences that are often too painful or complicated to put into words

THE STUDY'S RESULTS

A team from Drexel University has discovered that many people are turning to Instagram to share their feelings and experiences about their mental and physical issues .

The reason is that it is sometimes easier to share their thoughts in pictures, rather than put them into words - sometimes the experiences are too complicated or painful.

The team also found that posts seeking support and engagement about eating disorders, self-appearance and relationships are more likely to receive supportive comments - not just 'likes' - than the same type of post that is not worded in a way that is seeking support or social engagement.

These posts were also more likely to receive comments offering instrumental support such as how and where to get help.

The study was conducted by Drexel University, which found technology is helping those suffering with depression and other mental and physical issues break their silence.

'Physical or mental health and body image concerns are stigmatized, rarely disclosed and frequently elicit negative responses when shared with others,' the authors wrote in the study entitled 'Sensitive Self-disclosures, Responses, and Social Support on Instagram: The Case of #Depression.

'We found that these disclosures, in addition to deep and detailed stories of one's difficult experiences, attract positive social support on Instagram.'

The team conducted previous research into self-disclosure and support-seeking behavior among Reddit users, which they found users found anonymity through 'throwaway' accounts on the forum.

This allowed users to seek help without other redditors knowing who they are - and men who survived abuse were more likely than women to use throwaway accounts to tell their stories and seek support.

Numerous studies in the past have produced results suggesting that people avoid sharing their struggles with depression, eating disorders, abuse, mental health challenges and other sensitive issues on social media – specifically Facebook.

Share this article

Share

43 shares

The team notes that the reason is the same to why these issues are not brought up in public – there is a stigma attached to them.

Forte and her colleague, Nazanin Andalibi, a doctoral candidate in Drexel's College of Computing & Informatics, believe their Reddit research 'broke new ground' in the understanding of social media use in stigmatized and sensitive contexts.

Researchers found that there are range of issues people use images to express their feelings, which they share using hashtags such as '#depress', '#suicide' and '#ugly'

Researchers also discovered that it is not just the 'likes' that help individuals break their silence, but it is the comments offering instrumental support such as how and where to get help.

'At the same time we were studying interactions on Reddit, we were also looking at Instagram because it is one of the most heavily used social media sites and also allows pseudonymous users, in contrary to Facebook that enforces real-name policies' Andalibi said.

'And we wanted to see how people might behave differently on a more image-centric, rather than one that is driven solely by textual posts and comments.'

The team examined response to a sample of 800 Instagram posts pulled from more than 95,000 that were tagged with '#depression' , which were shared on the site by 24,920 users over the period of one month.

The results suggest that not only are people using the social media site as a platform to share personal information, but, for the most part, they are receiving positive support from others that respond to their posts – negative or aggressive comments were found to be scarce.

WHAT DO YOUR INSTAGRAM PHOTOS SAY ABOUT YOU?

Harvard University and the University of Vermont found users who post bluer, grayer and darker images may be suffering from depressions.

The 'Inkwell' filter was most commonly used by those who have been diagnosed with depression, while healthy individuals tended to use 'Valencia'.

Harvard University and the University of Vermont found users who post images with bluer, grayer and darker images on Instagram may be suffering from depressions

Those suffering from mental health issues were more likely to post pictures with faces, however there was about one face per photo.

This suggests that depressed individuals might post more selfies than others, however this theory has yet to be tested.

For the next part of their investigation, the researchers set out to understand the ways that Instagrammers use pictures, captions and comments to signal this need to connect.

And gathering posts that included '#depression' gave them a range of posts in which people were expressing their feelings, talking about their struggles and reaching out for support - both in words and pictures.

To explore the association between posts and comments and likes users receive, Forte and Andalibi organized them into categories based on the type of disclosures in the text and captions - ranging from disclosures seeking some sort of social interaction to those expressing emotion.

Experts designed a method for coding the content of images that uses context clues and organizes the types of messages they were expressing - like concerns about looks, relationship problems, illness, suicidal thoughts and pictures of food and beverage that were often used to talk about eating disorders

DOES SOCIAL MEDIA MAKE ADDICTS MORE DEPRESSED?

The more time young adults use social media, the more likely they are to be depressed, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

They say social media sites could be fueling 'Internet addiction,' a proposed psychiatric condition closely associated with depression.

Study sampled 1,787 U.S. adults ages 19 through 32, using questionnaires to determine social media use and an established depression assessment tool.

The questionnaires asked about the 11 most popular social media platforms at the time: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.

On average the participants used social media a total of 61 minutes per day and visited various social media accounts 30 times per week.

More than a quarter of the participants were classified as having 'high' indicators of depression.

They also designed a method for coding the content of images, which was inspired by visual sociology methods.

This strategy uses context clues and organizes the types of messages they were expressing - things like concerns about looks, relationship problems, illness, suicidal thoughts and pictures of food and beverage that were often used to talk about eating disorders.

After the team had an understanding about the general categories of posts that were tagged with '#depression', they then used a statistical analysis method that allowed them to see what kind of responses were most often elicited from particular types of posts.

'In our dataset, 32% of all comments included some sort of positive social support and 41% of posts elicited such comments,' reads the study.

'Some comments included explicit acknowledgments of feelings, thoughts, or experiences of the commenter, poster or both.'

'This suggests that people use comments as a vehicle to validate their own and others' feelings and to engage in reciprocal self-disclosure.'

For example, they noted that posts seeking support and engagement about eating disorders, self-appearance and relationships are more likely to receive supportive comments - not just 'likes' - than the same type of post that is not worded in a way that is seeking support or social engagement.

These posts were also more likely to receive comments offering instrumental support such as how and where to get help.